Can you hear the music?

An arsonist stood gazing out of the bars of his jail cell, pensively staring into the void. He thought nothing could pull him out of the abyss he’d plunged himself into, but a melody invaded his singular numbness. It drove him to the recreation area, a place that he generally avoided because it reminded him of how bleak his life was and would be even after he was released. He was mesmerised by how the sound wrapped around him like smoke, slipping through the cracks of his mind, igniting something he thought had burned out long ago. It wasn’t just music—it was something deeper, something primal. He followed it without thinking, drawn like a moth to a flame.

The recreation area was the same as ever—gray walls, lifeless benches, men lost in their silent despair—but at the center of it all- sat an old inmate with a battered guitar. His fingers cruised the strings with an effortless grace, pulling impossible emotion from the wood and steel.

The arsonist stood frozen, watching. Listening.

Then, for the first time in years, he felt the urge to create rather than destroy.

However, creation and destruction were not all that different. Both were, after all, fire.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, only that the music had reached inside him and set something ablaze. His hands twitched, aching for movement, but not for the distastefully violent thrills of his past. This was something new— something visceral.

The old inmate playing the guitar lifted his head. His eyes locked onto the arsonist’s, and at that moment, there was an understanding. Without breaking rhythm, he nodded toward the empty seat beside him.

The arsonist hesitated, then moved forward.

As he sat, he noticed something strange about the guitar. Scratched into its surface were symbols—intricate, looping, shifting when looked at too long. Runes. He didn’t recognise them, but they felt old, humming with a silent resonance beneath the melody.

“They’ll whisper to you if you play it long enough,” the old man murmured, fingers still plucking at the strings.

The arsonist swallowed. “What are they?”

The old man smiled, a grin that held both kindness and something else—something knowing. “A gateway.”

For weeks after that, the arsonist returned every time he heard the music. He began to learn—not just the songs, but the meaning beneath them. The old man never explained outright, only guided him, urging him to listen. To feel. To see.

One fine day, the old man was gone without any warning or explanation.

The guards said that he had been transferred. However, he had left something behind.

The guitar.

The arsonist traced the runes with his fingertips. They felt warm. Alive. And when he plucked the first note, the sound was different— bigger, more resonant.

He didn’t stop playing. Not even when others began to gather. Not even when the music began to change them.

The prison transformed into something bewildering after that. The ones who listened—truly listened—began to mark themselves with the runes, carving them into skin, painting them onto cell walls. Whispers spread in the night. The music was more than sound. It was a calling. A blueprint. A ritual.

By the time the day of his release finally came, the arsonist was no longer just a man.

He was a messiah.

And the world was kindling.

The runes had led him here.

Carved into prison walls. Inked onto flesh. Hidden in liner notes of forgotten records, etched into the wood of old instruments passed between hands that knew their power. The runes weren’t just symbols. They were a blueprint, a prophecy waiting to be fulfilled.

He had seen them first in the guitar given to him in prison. He had followed them out into the desert, where his music became something more than sound—something alive, something hungry. The commune had grown around it, a collective of the lost and the restless, drawn by the melodies that wrapped around them like scripture.

Now, after years of preparation, rejection, exile, after waiting in the shadows— it was time.

The rite would be their performance.

The performance would be their ritual.

And when the last note was played, the world would change.

The amphitheatre sat waiting, a hollowed-out relic of past performances. It had hosted bands before—nights of raw, unfiltered energy, distortion screaming through the air. But tonight, it would be something else.

The bands had gathered, drawn by something they couldn’t explain. Some thought it was just another underground festival, an unmissable night of chaos and sound. Others felt it in their bones—the strange pull, the sense that this was different.

None of them had noticed the runes yet.

They were everywhere—hidden in the designs of drumheads, engraved into the brass of cymbals, scratched onto violin bows, burned into the wood of double basses and tambourines. They were in the strings of sitars, in the hollow chambers of flutes, in the tuning pegs of mandolins.

The sound they would produce tonight would not be normal.

It would be transcendent.

The crowd gathered. Shadows stretched as the sun dipped below the horizon. The air was thick with anticipation, electricity crackling in every breath. Conversations buzzed with excitement, oblivious to the force waiting just beneath the surface of the night.

Backstage, he watched.

His hands traced the worn body of his guitar, his fingers brushing over the runes carved into its surface. Around him, his followers prepared. Some tuned instruments. Some meditated, eyes closed, letting the rhythm already humming in the air settle into their bones.

And then, the moment arrived.

The stage lights flared.

He stepped forward, gripping the microphone stand.

A deep breath. A final moment of stillness.

Then, the first chord hit.

The distortion howled.

The crowd roared.

The rite had begun.

𝔐𝔢𝔩𝔱𝔡𝔬𝔴𝔫 2025

Note: This piece is fictional, but heavily inspired by the theme of Meltdown 2025.